Carol Christie was only 18 when she was chided, drugged and manipulated by her mother into becoming the fourth wife and one of three “church wives” to the prophet of the Church of Jesus Christ Restored.

The so-called prophet — Stan King — was more than twice Christie’s age. Yet Christie was not the youngest of the wives; another was just 14. And as the years passed, Christie says, King took three more “church wives” ranging in age from 10 to 17.

When he died in 1986 at age 58, Fred King took over. He was King’s youngest son by his only legal wife. Fred King took control of both the spiritual and temporal lives of his followers.

He bedded his father’s wives, ran the church’s printing company and prescribed every aspect of the lives of his followers who live on an 80-hectare property near Owen Sound, Ont., that was once a ski resort.

Christie’s story is strikingly similar to those told by women who have escaped the fundamentalist Mormon community of Bountiful, B.C., even though there are no formal links to either the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (FLDS) or the breakaway group that Winston Blackmore leads.

All three groups denounce the mainstream Mormon church and are denounced by the mainstream Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. All three breakaway groups claim to be the only true followers of Joseph Smith. All three condone polygamy, although the Ontario church limits it to the prophet.

The prophets share a penchant for girls and young women and group sex. Their control over boys is equally strong and results in them working almost as slave labourers for companies whose profits go almost solely to the leader.

Christie was fortunate. She was Stan King’s favoured wife, having borne him two sons in quick succession. While she chafed under the prophet’s control, he was never physically abusive.

His son was.

“He would look into my eyes and perceive evil and I would have the bejeebers kicked out of me,” Christie tells me during a recent interview. “He [Fred King] grew to be very large and strong and he could knock me right off a chair. He could hit me so hard that I would go flying through the air.”

In 2007, Christie and James, her elder son, were watching a TV report about FLDS prophet Warren Jeffs, the FLDS prophet, of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. Jeffs was in jail in Utah awaiting trial. He was later convicted of being an accomplice to the rape of a 14-year-old girl.

“That’s us, m om,” James said. “That’s the way we live. That could be our story as easily as theirs.”

In April 2007, James left the group even though Carol says the prophet repeatedly told his followers that he would hunt down and kill anyone who left.

Carol promised to leave once she’d saved some money and been able to convince her younger son to come with her. The younger son believes what he’s been taught. He believes that he will be damned for eternity if he leaves the group that has dwindled to about 40 people from a high of more than 90.

But things didn’t work out that way. After a particularly harsh beating in March 2008 — another round of the prophet’s punishment for her being an evil and unfit mother for raising a son who wouldn’t obey – Christie was convinced she wouldn’t survive the next one.

For eight years, she’d been under virtual house arrest in a tiny apartment that she shared with another plural wife. Christie could only go out if she was accompanied by someone appointed by the prophet to be her minder.

She left her younger son behind and hasn’t seen him since.

It’s hard to reconcile the vivacious Carol Christie who I interviewed with the woman she must have been for so many years. It is one of the cruel ironies of those who are strong enough to escape from cults that their own strength makes it hard for some people to believe their stories.

Despite more than three decades of control, brainwashing and later abuse, Christie says she truly believed that if she worked hard and was kind to people she would survive outside the church.

She’s done that and more.

In October 2009, Christie married – legally – for the first time.

With the support of her husband, John Christie, she sued the Church of Jesus Christ Restored for the abuse she suffered. It was, she believes, the first time in Canada that a former cult member had filed a civil suit against the cult and its leader for abuse.

Still, it took two years and two traumatic events before Christie decided to go public with her story.

On Mother’s Day in 2010, she was mugged in the middle of the day and dragged down an Owen Sound street “fighting like a wildcat” as the robbers tried to cut her purse strap with a knife. (The two robbers have been jailed.)

Then, in December 2010, she went to a Christmas party where her beautiful coat – the first new coat she’d ever owned – was stolen from the restaurant cloak room.

A few days later, while she and John were driving. “I turned to him and in a loud voice I said , ‘I’ve had it. I’m not going to be a victim anymore.’”

John took her straight to a lawyer and for the second time in her life, Carol Christie told her story.

In January 2011, Christie and the church reached an out-of-court settlement with a confidentiality clause that covers only the amount of the settlement, but doesn’t stop her from talking about her experience.

After Christie’s story was told by W5 reporter Victor Malarek last November, the Ontario Provincial Police began an investigation, which is continuing. In April, Christie’s book titled Property was published by Dundurn Press.

Christie wants the people she left behind to be freed.

“I love the people I left back there. Not a day goes by that I don’t think about them. That was my world for so many years. They’re my family and I miss them.”

And heartened by the B.C. Supreme Court’s 2010 decision that upheld the constitutionality of Canada’s anti-polygamy law, Christie wants the Ontario justice system to do what has seemed impossible in British Columbia.

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